


do you know the one where we all live happily?

by ceruleanVulpine



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, The Expected Level Of Slaughter-Based Intrusive Thoughts, caring about people and talking about your feelings: sometimes it's ok, happier than my other tma fic! things are still bad but they're making do!, kind of but not really morning after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 08:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16552025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceruleanVulpine/pseuds/ceruleanVulpine
Summary: So this isn’t normal, this thing where she’s standing half-dressed in the doorway to Basira’s bedroom, trying to decide whether or not to wake her. If you lined up every possible Melanie King, subtracted the ones who never made it here — she bets she’d be the only one without the sense to stick to a long tradition of simple, casual, low-stakes relationships andgo.What she wouldn’t give for a universe where this is low-stakes. Things must be so easy, for that Melanie.---Melanie has a rough morning. Basira does what she knows. Things work out unexpectedly well, given the circumstances. (Set post-MAG 106.)





	do you know the one where we all live happily?

Melanie doesn’t have a lot of _meaningful connections,_ it’s true. 

It’s always been a choice, that’s what some people don’t understand. It’s always been her, waking up first in someone else’s silent house and finding her way to her clothes, her bag, the door. She leaves to prove she can, because if they won’t let her worn-out excuse about “work things” go unchallenged, well. Better not to get invested. It sounds callous, put like that, but it’s nicer than subjecting anyone to the self-sabotaging-but-not-necessarily-self-directed thrashing-about that she knows she has a tendency towards when she feels… attached to. 

So this isn’t normal, this thing where she’s standing half-dressed in the doorway to Basira’s bedroom, trying to decide whether or not to wake her. If you lined up every possible Melanie King, subtracted the ones who never made it here — she bets she’d be the only one without the sense to stick to a long tradition of simple, casual, low-stakes relationships and _go._

What she wouldn’t give for a universe where this is low-stakes. Things must be so easy, for that Melanie. 

Basira sighs and turns onto her side, the drag of the blanket startlingly loud. Melanie freezes, unsteady with a foot raised to her ankle to toe at her sock, one hundred percent sure that she’s run out of time to make a decision and that Basira is going to open her eyes and find Melanie staring at her sleeping body like a creep. The stab of adrenaline bypasses conscious thought, and her hands curl automatically into useless fists. Useless because Basira is stronger and faster, even half-asleep, and Melanie has no weapon — no, because she’s not _fighting Basira._

She shakes her head sharply. There are too many carrion-crow thoughts circling her lately, fight-or-flight thrown all askew and way out of proportion. Basira buries her face in the pillow and relaxes back into sleep as Melanie tries to convince her nervous system she isn’t in danger. The easy set of Basira’s shoulders, the uncalculated angles of her limbs, her dark hair spilling loose over her neck; she’s a picture of peaceful unconcern, all the tension gone out of her. 

Melanie doesn’t want to stand still. She paces into the bathroom, realizes she doesn’t have a toothbrush, and does the best she can with a smear of toothpaste on her index finger. She thinks she tastes blood — she’s sure she tastes blood — but there isn’t a trace of pink in her spit. She examines her gums. Nothing there either. She gives up and rinses it all down the drain. 

Her reflection stares at her from the mirror, and all her irritation refocuses on that imagined other Melanie, whose life is simple. She can’t stop turning her over in her head; it’s half daydreaming and half digging at a scab, deciding what else that Melanie has that she can’t. A better meet-cute story than “fellow hostage,” for one. (The other Melanie is smart, so she would have never gone upstairs to a packed office just short of turning violent and watched a cop pull a gun on her boss, and couldn’t have made confused eye contact with the stranger she found there.) She mentally flips through possibilities. Office holiday party, nice and boring. Basira coming in to give a statement. Basira waiting in the hallway the first time Melanie stormed out of Jon’s office, raising her eyebrows over a curious smile. 

Then she realizes that the Archives have their hooks in her even in her imagination, and grips the edge of the counter to steady herself as anger prickles up the back of her arms. A whole multiverse of hypotheticals to pick from, and she doesn’t picture herself as someone who never walked into that particular death trap? Melanie is angry at a lot of things, all the time, but right now she is first and foremost furious with herself: she cannot _get used to this,_ she will not. She refuses to get comfortable in her cage when she could be clawing at the bars — 

Her mind jerks back from the idea of causing trouble, cringing away from expected pain, like a broken animal. No more clawing at the bars for her; no more screaming her throat raw, because the man with the key thinks the noise is distasteful. 

Rage crowds up into her chest. She forces her hands open and breathes slowly in and out. She goes back into the other room, concentrating on keeping her steps quiet, and makes herself count the freckles she can see on Basira’s bare shoulder. None of it helps.

So — fine. Okay. So maybe Melanie was still poking around abandoned buildings for ghost footage and Basira was still a cop. This is Melanie’s hypothetical, and so she decides that Basira wasn’t even a spooky license-to-kill Section 31 cop, just … found her somewhere she shouldn’t have been, and wrote her up for trespassing. A tense first meeting, sparks flying, but they kept running into each other. Old fights became old jokes became shared drinks and kisses and tumbling into bed together, and then in the morning Melanie would be gone, free and untethered. Basira wouldn’t mind. 

She doesn’t think _this_ Basira would mind. Basira is kinder than she deserves, but she isn’t pushy about it — she doesn’t seem to expect anything that Melanie doesn’t want to give. She keeps the worry from her voice so well that Melanie’s not sure if she imagined the times she has caught it. She laughs at Melanie’s morbid, bitter jokes like they’re actually funny, instead of looking at her like she’s lost it. If Basira woke up alone, Melanie expects she’d shrug and come into work like nothing had changed, and Melanie could still count on her, solid and reliable where Melanie crumples at the memory of — 

No. No, no, no. She pulls her mind back from that precipice. She is not going to think about her _performance review_. Not now — maybe not ever, but especially not now, because worse than staring weirdly at Basira is staring weirdly at Basira with helpless, angry tears in her eyes. 

She notices belatedly that her palms are stinging, rows of red crescents darkening where she dug her nails in. Well, she didn’t break the skin, that’s something.

Melanie imagines Daisy bloody Tonner out of her invented life, and then feels guilty and puts her back in. Maybe Daisy would have given her the shovel talk, and it would have been she’s-a-cop scary but not confirmed-murderer scary. Maybe Daisy would know her name, instead of staring through her at Basira with a stoically betrayed expression. Maybe not. 

She reaches out for more daydream, and instead a quiet voice in her head says _that Melanie wouldn’t know._

Smart, lucky, free Melanie wouldn’t know how her father died, not the way she knows, with horrible and intrusive certainty. Not with the knowledge dropped into her brain like a lit match flicked casually into a gas can, the lack of _seeing_ not much of a mercy when invented horrors blaze behind her eyelids. That Melanie would have had no reason to sob into Basira’s shoulder until she was a gross snot-monster, so distraught she couldn’t speak, and when that Melanie tried to kiss her, not needing to wipe her face beforehand, Basira wouldn’t have said “wait” or “listen, it’s not that I’m not into you” or “another day, yeah? look, I can sleep on the couch.”

It would have been nice. 

Melanie scrubs at her face with the collar of her borrowed t-shirt and tells her eyes to stop it. She wishes they had kissed. Not because it would have been a good idea, but because then she would know what to do. She has protocols for one-night stands, but none for “my coworker comforted me through the fallout of telepathic sadism, let me pace and snarl and throw things in her apartment, and then gave up her bed because in the face of _all this_ she was still worried about taking advantage.” What an oversight. 

Basira stirs, and Melanie is still there. She sits up and yawns and rubs sleep out of her eyes, and Melanie is still there. “Hey,” she says, a smile creeping into her lovely voice; and Melanie wants so badly to run, and doesn’t. 

If she could flee all this she would. If she could be that Melanie, who does not know, she would give up every moment of Basira’s comfort. Gnaw off her own leg, cut out her own heart. She is sure of this.

“Good morning,” she says, anyway.

—

Basira makes breakfast. It’s weirdly normal.

“You sleep okay? No spooky dreams?” The question is carefully casual, and she doesn’t look at Melanie as she asks it. 

“Just the regular kind of spooky,” Melanie lies. “Nightmares are kind of reassuring at this point. I’ve had them since I was a kid. You know, teeth falling out, monster in the closet, all the classics.” 

She dreamt of guiding a knife up under Elias’ ribs, slow and sure, the blade carrying the resistance of parting flesh right up into the bones of her hand. She does have nightmares, plenty, but this wasn’t one of them. 

“Right, yeah. I used to get this one where I woke up places I knew, but everything was backwards — like everything but me was in a mirror? Nothing ever happened, but it was scary as hell anyway.” 

“God, please don’t tell Jon that. I don’t think I could bear it if he tried to tell you that was the sign of some evil symmetry demon.” 

Basira grins. “I promise.” 

They talk about nothing for a while. Basira doesn’t sit, standing instead with her elbows propped on the little island of counter between them. Neither of them mention the way Melanie attacks her eggs with the dull edge of her fork, having picked up the knife and then set it right back down at the dream-memory of blood between her fingers. She drums her heels on the leg of her chair. It should be comforting, to sit in the bright morning light and let herself be distracted, but she can’t quite paper over her violent unease. 

She sighs. Basira glances up at her, a question in her eyes, and Melanie shakes her head, suddenly irritated with herself. “Let’s not talk about it,” she declares. “Last night. All of it. Thanks for dealing with me, you’re incredible and I’m a disaster, let’s not risk the crying again unless we really have to.” 

“Um,” Basira says, in a rare moment of visible surprise. Then she rallies: “That might be better. I’m not really good at … all this.” She describes a broad category in the air with her fork. “Feelings.”

“What, you were a pro last night!” Breaking her own rule immediately, but it’s a joke, sort of, so it’s fine.

“Not so much in the light of day,” Basira says. “Person in crisis? That’s easy. I can deal with that. But you want me to, like, have a conversation with someone I see every day? Oh, god, call for backup.” 

“Daisy wouldn’t be much help.” Melanie smirks, imagining Daisy kicking down a door, all ready to rescue her partner, and then kicking her way back out at the sight of a teary eye. 

“No,” Basira agrees. “You don’t get much practice, with her. She’s not big on talking about things either.” 

“Oh.”

Her and Daisy, miserable hard-edged Daisy, still until she explodes in violence, so careful not to learn their names, in case she gets attached. Daisy who is so free from caring and so caught in her armor that she won’t let anyone see her out of it, especially not the only person who really matters. 

No wonder Basira is so good at this. It all makes sense at once, in the perfectly even way she says Daisy’s name: Basira didn’t choose this, because she didn’t think she had another choice. She was backed into a corner on pain of losing her partner and — whatever Melanie is to her, and now she’s walled herself in with careful nonchalance. Melanie King breaks walls, even when it hurts.

“I dreamt about Elias,” she says, and then, “I dreamt about killing Elias. I dream about a lot of killing. It should be horrible, but sometimes it’s not.”

There, now she’s said it, not through tears but calmly, in the clear light of day. Now it’s real. Almost immediately she wishes she could take it back, because Basira looks like she has no idea what to say. 

Then Basira says: “Well. That sucks.”

Melanie laughs. For a second Basira freezes, but then she puts her face in her hands and starts to laugh too.

“You weren’t joking,” Melanie says, “we are _very_ bad at this.” 

“Practice makes perfect.”

“Practice with horrible tragedy,” Melanie says, darkly speculative. “I’m sure we’ll get plenty.”

To her surprise, Basira reaches over to flick her shoulder. She looks a little unsure, but she manages to sound stern as she says “No fatalism at breakfast.” 

“Is that fatalistic or realistic? — fine! Alright, fine, I’m being positive. Positive Melanie, that’s me.” She rolls her eyes, but she can’t help but smile. 

The apartment seems a little lighter, as they tidy up together. At length, with some false starts and a great deal of silently swearing at herself for being a coward, Melanie forces herself to say “You know, if you really want practice, I could tell you about that ghost that shot me.”

Basira looks up from her phone. “Yeah?” she says cautiously. “I thought that was a big secret.”

“Oh, come on, you’ve been talking to Jon too much. I just don’t want to make a statement. Because, eugh.”

“Fair,” Basira says solemnly. 

“So let me tell you a story then,” Melanie says, half-falling onto the couch next to her and drawing up her knees. “ _Not_ a statement. You can say ‘oh, that sounds just awful’ whenever you like.” 

Basira’s right: she hasn’t told anyone. But it’s easy to start telling it, when she can start not with ghosts but with her disastrous airplane ride, Basira parroting back her suggested phrases of sympathy with an impressively straight face, and that momentum carries her through the parts that are harder to say out loud. She goes into more detail than she meant to. Basira nods silently as she listens, intent but not pitying, and somehow that’s enough.

Melanie even shows Basira her scar. She thinks about cages and fellow prisoners, armor and walls, and escape, as always. She fears getting used to her confinement, she always has: frightened of taking comfort in anyone, in case it makes her less able or less willing to throw herself against the bars until they break or she does. But she’s not escaping this one. Well, not alone.

With a hand behind her back Melanie flips off the corner where the walls and ceiling meet, the place where she imagines an invisible eye. And she leans in to meet Basira, and she stays.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "coin laundry" by lisa mitchell! thanks for reading <3


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